TIME/Qualcomm Panel Discussion: The Future of Invention

Last week’s issue of TIME featured the TIME Invention poll, in cooperation with Qualcomm, a survey of 10,197 people in 17 countries around the world. The poll, which accompanied TIME’s annual list of the year’s 25 Best Inventions, revealed a wide range of opinions about who inventors are, how they do their work and which countries are the most inventive. “It’s easy enough to recognize a prolific inventor when we see one,” wrote TIME’s Jeff Kluger. “It’s far harder to define what the act of invention is—how it springs into being, how it visits some of us and not others, how an idea that seems so obvious after the invention has been conceived and built was so opaque, so elusive before.”

TIME continued the conversation with a special panel discussion, The Future of Invention, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Dean Kamen, the founder of DEKA Research & Development, joined TIME Senior Correspondent Massimo Calabresi to discuss the invention process. TIME Assistant Managing Editor Tom Weber moderated a session, Nurturing Invention, featuring Donna Harris, co-founder of 1776; Richard Pazdur, head of Oncology Products at the FDA; and Kripa Varanasi, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Weber also moderated a conversation between Rodney Brooks, chairman, founder and CEO of Rethink Robotics and Anthony Moschella, the director of product at MakerBot Industries.

Last week’s issue of TIME featured the TIME Invention poll, in cooperation with Qualcomm, a survey of 10,197 people in 17 countries around the world. The poll, which accompanied TIME’s annual list of the year’s 25 Best Inventions, revealed a wide range of opinions about who inventors are, how they do their work and which countries are the most inventive. “It’s easy enough to recognize a prolific inventor when we see one,” wrote TIME’s Jeff Kluger. “It’s far harder to define what the act of invention is—how it springs into being, how it visits some of us and not others, how an idea that seems so obvious after the invention has been conceived and built was so opaque, so elusive before.”

TIME continued the conversation with a special panel discussion, The Future of Invention, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Dean Kamen, the founder of DEKA Research & Development, joined TIME Senior Correspondent Massimo Calabresi to discuss the invention process. TIME Assistant Managing Editor Tom Weber moderated a session, Nurturing Invention, featuring Donna Harris, co-founder of 1776; Richard Pazdur, head of Oncology Products at the FDA; and Kripa Varanasi, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Weber also moderated a conversation between Rodney Brooks, chairman, founder and CEO of Rethink Robotics and Anthony Moschella, the director of product at MakerBot Industries.